If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, you’d laze in bed together on Sunday mornings, with just thin, jersey-cotton sheets as the only barrier between your bodies and the air, and she would read Wallace Stevens aloud to you. You’d debate the pros and cons of austerity in poetry until she said, “Honey, we’re saying the same thing,” and then kissed you through a smile.

If Mary-Louise Parker were your girlfriend, she would normally keep her

The oldest story in the world starts with a fortress, a dreamer, and an elusive idea: "a better life." Pack your bags, little dreamer, spread your wings and go! Fly over the fortress to chase that map, that blank spot, that finger-pointed "there."

Good morning! Wake up! You're going to be late for school! What's that? It's me, silly. Your mother! It's August 26th, the first day of school, and you're going to be late if you don't get a move on. Sorry, what did you just say? Oh, don't be ridiculous, kiddo. You know what year it is. You're twelve years old, and you're starting the seventh grade today, and it's just after six am. Your alarm…

The TV is too loud because he’s hard of hearing, and he leans forward so he doesn’t miss a word, his eyes hungry, unblinking. The motorcycle sport documentary On Any Sunday plays on the screen, and though my dad has probably seen it a dozen times, his fascination will never fade. He’s watching the part about the famous Widowmaker hill climb-- the 1,000-foot-tall mountain slope in Utah that only twenty riders out

For the Creative-Anxious Parent™ the world is a veritable junkyard of nightmare futures just begging to be collected-- what if my child is bullied ferociously? What if my child makes some disgusting sex party urban legend indisputably real? What if my child keeps large, seemingly-immortal snakes as pets? In developing one’s irrational, ultimately pointless parental anxiety, it’s important to integrate less obvious, more esoteric fears into one’s 2:30 am worrying practice. Here, some…

Previously in this series: If Harrison Ford Were Your Boyfriend. We recently featured The Fug Girls on writing as a duo.

If Prince Harry were your boyfriend, he would, in secret, change his listing in your phone all the time. You’d have added him in simply as “H,” but one day you’d get a text from someone called “Henry IX.” And then a whole chain of them: “H. Balls,” “Jack the

If Harrison Ford were your boyfriend, he would let you and only you quote lines from his movies* in casual conversation. You would both get an especially big kick out of using the tunnel exchange from The Fugitive. He would say “I didn’t accidentally bleach the color clothes,” and you would yell “I DON’T CARE!” just like Tommy Lee Jones did,

Though I have not spoken to my father in almost four years, I still talk to him all the time, in vivid technicolor and exaggerated emotion. The landscape of sleep has always been visceral for me; my dreams often follow me into my waking hours, so real that I feel sure upon awakening that the things contained within my sleeping subconscious have been manifested into fact. The dreams I have about my father

Elisa Gabbert's previous work for The Butter can be found here. Years ago, a friend told me that she dreams in the third person, watching herself. At the time, I found this improbable—why wouldn’t you dream as you live?—until I noticed that I often fantasize in the third person. I don’t just mean sexual fantasies, but any time I project forward into an imagined future, and sometimes I replay memories as though I’m watching…

The wind whistles outside all day long, and every day we go outside and listen to it. It’s a long ritual, putting on our layers and our specialized snowsuits, but it’s worth it to have the sun hit our eyes and to hear the songs of the season. And it’s our news for

Previously in this series: If Carrie Brownstein Were Your Girlfriend. If Cobie Smulders were your ostensibly platonic gym buddy for whom you have conflicted feelings, she would always have one stubborn lock of hair that escaped her ponytail. "Let me get that for you," you would say, and then you would use your calloused hands to slip it back under the elastic, with a curiously delicate touch. "Thanks, man," Cobie would say. "One of…